


Stitch By Stitch

by justanorthernlight



Category: NCIS: Los Angeles
Genre: Gen, Knitting, Nefarious Alpaca Farms, Undercover Missions, almost but not quite crackfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 12:54:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8144795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanorthernlight/pseuds/justanorthernlight
Summary: An undercover mission gives Callen a new hobby. 
Written for the NCISLA Hiatus Fic Exchange 2016.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FeathersMcStrange](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeathersMcStrange/gifts).



Callen trailed the recipient of the mysterious package through the streets of a trendy Los Angeles suburb. Sam had taken off in the Challenger after Private Jenkins, the originator of the package and one of three suspects NCIS had in the disappearance of several pounds of explosives from an armory at Camp Pendleton. (Honestly, after all of the times it had happened, all of the investigations, security consultations, improvements, and tests NCIS had done on that armory, and criminals _still_ managed to sneak something out. Callen was caught between bewildered frustration and grudging respect at the boundless creativity the other side managed, although he kept both emotions to himself, knowing the personal sting of betrayal Sam felt every time a crime smelt of inside job.)

Eric was still working on IDing the woman, photo taken from a surveillance cam in the café she’d met Jenkins in, so Callen stayed after her on foot while Sam stayed on Jenkins. He trailed her from a small café on the edge of the suburbs and through a residential neighborhood, short on camera coverage and nearly deserted in the dinner hour. He was forced to hang far back to avoid being spotted. After almost a mile the houses and duplexes gave way to a main thoroughfare lined with shops and restaurants, more heavily populated. It was enough cover for him to close up the distance, just in time as the woman dodged across traffic and into a shop on the other side of the street.

“Eric, she’s going into a store called The Dropped Stitch, look into it and see what comes up.” Callen ordered as he followed the woman across the street and pushed the door open, taking in the flyers posted in the window with a quick glance. The door swung shut behind him and he drew up short, trying taken aback by the riot of color before him.

The walls were lined with cubbyholes stuffed to overflowing with skeins of yarn in every color under the sun. Isles of yet more yarn were set further back, past a pair tables pushed together and surrounded by chairs. Where there wasn’t yarn there were racks of needles, hooks, strange plastic rings he couldn’t fathom the purpose of. He pushed aside the riot of sensory input and scanned the store for the woman, who somehow snuck past his peripheral vision and popped up at his elbow seemingly out of nowhere.

“Hi, are you here for the class?” She asked perkily, bleached-white grin wide.

“Yes,” Callen replied, unsure of what he was signing up for but then again, ninety percent of spywork was pure improv, and the cardinal rule of improv was saying ‘yes, and...’ “Yes I am, if there’s room for a drop in.”

“Registration fee is fifty dollars, I’ll get you a registration form to fill out. I’m Becky, I’ll be your instructor this evening.”

Eric snickered in his earpiece.

“Got an ID yet?” Callen muttered under his breath while her back was turned.

_“Not yet, we’re running employment records now though. The store has four-point-nine stars out of five on Yelp, though. Looks like you’re signing up for Knitting 101.”_

“We need to know what’s in that package.” Callen replied softly.

_“Do you want me to call you some backup?”_

“No, I’ve got this.”

Becky returned with the form which Callen filled out as Greg Nichols, one of his day-to-day covers as an insurance broker out in Malibu. He shoved the receipt in his pocket and began imagining ways to justify it on his expense reports. Becky pointed him to the table where the class supplies were laid out.

A handful of other students were milling around them; a trio of teenagers, two women each with a toddler in tow, and a frail-looking old man whose hands shook as he picked up a skein of gray wool. Callen moved to echo his choice, but spotted a ball of bright red the same shade he’d seen on a painted matryoshka doll in a farmhouse in Russia only a few months ago. He snatched it up impulsively, along with a package of knitting needles from the pile. Becky set her bag down on the table and rifled through it. Callen took the seat next to her and made a show of examining the thin aluminum needles, really trying to peer into her bag until she set it under the table on her other side.

He didn’t learn what was in the package that night.

He did learn how to cast on, knit, purl, and bind off, and he chucked three misshapen sample squares (garter stitch, stockinette, and an introduction to ribbing) into the back seat of the Challenger when Sam picked him up two hours later.

“Did you get anywhere with Jenkins?” Callen asked.

“He went out drinking Lt. Hernandez and a couple of the others. Kensi and Deeks are on them for now, I think he spotted the Challenger. I see your evening was productive.” Sam replied, twisting around and grabbing one of the squares. “Nice, maybe we should take this home and pin it to the refrigerator.” He fingered a hole where Callen had dropped a stitch, not realized it until three rows later and awkwardly stretched the drop back up. And to be fair the mistake had occurred when he deliberately droppped the entire piece, needles and tangled thread all, on the floor to get a look at the bag, but Becky had come back around the table to check on him before he could swipe it. She was either a master player or he was having a night of terrible luck.  

“Yeah, you mock but we both know this isn’t anywhere close to the most embarrassing thing either of us has had to do undercover.” G growled.

Sam laughed. “Maybe it will be good for you, give you a hobby.”

“Just drive, will you.”

The Challenger peeled away from the curb with a squeal of tires.

*

The three little swatches were pretty useless, although for an odd reason G was reluctant to part with them. They wound up in the armory rag pile, and turned out to be surprisingly good scrubbers.

*

A week later, their surveillance of Jenkins interrupted by two murder cases and a surprise trip overseas, Sam and Callen exited Becky’s (full name Rebecca Tallman, 29, lived in LA for the past five years, worked at the Dropped Stitch for four, suspicious lack of paper trail prior to her arrival) apartment, their search for the package unfruitful.

“Maybe there was nothing out of place in it.” Callen said. “Maybe she it was cash or something she needed to pass on to someone else.”

“It’s still the best lead we’ve got. I guess you’re going back to knitting class.”

“You don’t have to sound so smug about it. Besides, she put me off whenever I tried to strike up a personal conversation last time, maybe we should send Kensi or Deeks in as a new employee or something.”

“Eric looked into it, the place has a ton of part time and swing-shift employees, more than enough to cover any absence we tried to create.”

“Fine, I’ll go back to knitting class. This week we’re making dishcloths.”

“Do you even own any dishes that aren’t disposable?”

“No, that just means I should give it to you. Maybe Michelle would appreciate it.”

“Considering what your last pieces of work looked like, I doubt it.

*

As an undercover operation class number two was a complete bust. Getting close to a suspect or asset took time, Callen knew, but Becky was about as personally open as a stone sphinx. The dishcloth did not go to the Hanna house, instead it too wound up in the armory.

*

That Saturday Sam went undercover at Pendleton, as a Private transferred in to cover for Lt. Hernandez, who –in a moment of pure serendipity- wound up in the base hospital with severe pneumonia.

Monday, Jenkins offered to take Sam’s (Gunnery Sgt. Zeke Sanders’, ostensibly) early morning shift. Sam declined, and Jenkins got disproportionately put out.

Tuesday, the team trailed Jenkins again, and this time to a locked back room at a low-budget steakhouse just after the lunch rush. They were unable to get any eyes or ears into the room, but they saw both Becky the knitter and a known fringe militia member named Cam Thompson enter after him, not the kind of person they wanted to see acquire high explosives.

Tuesday evening Callen attended the first of a three-part hat and scarf class. He bought a set of double pointed needles, learned to knit in the round, and learned that an entire line of The Dripped Stitch’s boutique yarn came from the Thompson Alpaca Farm, owned by a cousin of the aforementioned Cam Thompson.

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning the team set out on the three hour drive to the farm.

“Why are you still working on that anyways?” Sam asked as Callen’s needles clacked rhythmically together.

“We have no guarantee the explosives are going to be at the farm.” Callen replied. “I should maintain my cover just in case. Besides, it’s... nice.”

“Nice?”

“You know, soothing. Relaxing. Meditative. Nate actually suggested I take it up, a few years ago.” He squinted down at the aquamarine fabric forming between his hands. “Besides, aren’t you usually the one who’s gaga over making things that are real with your own two hands? Didn’t you spend a month building a set of cabinets yourself instead of hiring someone to do it?”

“This is going to turn into another one of your fads, isn’t it? Tell me, do you still practice your magic tricks?”

“First of all, they’re illusions. Secondly, yes, from time to time. Shouldn’t let the skills get rusty, never know when you’re going to need them.” 

Sam shook his head, and the two spent the rest of the drive in silence, Callen’s needles clicking away. They came to a stop on an access road near the back of the farm property. Kensi and Deeks pulled up beside them and rolled down their windows.

“You two go in the front, you own a small craft store and want to buy. Sam and I will take a look around here.”

The other two drove off. Callen stuck the half-formed hat in the pocket of his jacket and he and Sam started across the field. Fluffy brown and white alpacas grazed placidly, watching them pass. There were a number of outbuildings scattered around the edges of the fields. They checked through each, finding only equipment and farm supplies, not traces of either explosives or militia members, until they reached the main barn. Raised voices sounded through the early morning mist. Sam and Callen each drew their weapons and crept close.

G edged along the side of the building until he reached a window and carefully peered in.

Becky, Jenkins, Thompson, and three other rough-looking men with guns were standing around arguing, and at their feet was the missing crate of hand grenades.

“Eric, alert ATF, we need some backup.”

_“Right away. It’ll take some time to get to you, though.”_

“We can’t let these guys leave.” Sam murmured.

Callen turned to him and had just opened his mouth to agree when a gunshot rang through the early morning stillness.

“Kensi, Deeks, get out here now.”

_“Copy that!”_

Sam and G raced around the side of the barn to the entrance and burst through with a shout.

“Federal agents, don’t move!”

Thompson moved, whirling to face them with his rifle leveled at chest height. He let off two shots before Sam put him down with a double tap to the torso. Callen felt something whoosh past him, far too close, but still managed to shoot two of the unknown men as they too raised their weapons.

Becky, Jenkins, and the third man froze as their companions fell.

“Hands in the air, come on, now!”

The four survivors did as they were told and the two agents disarmed and cuffed them, then secured the crate.

“You good?” Sam asked as Callen patted at his stomach.

“I’m fine.” Callen replied, then dug into his pocket. “My hat isn’t. Neither is my jacket.” He held up the tangled mass, a bullet hole pierced through the fabric. “Well, that was a nearer miss than I like.”

Kensi and Deeks raced into the barn and skidded to a stop. Deeks seemed to be sporting the beginnings of a black eye, and Kensi’s hair had fallen half-out of her ponytail.

“You guys have everything under control here?”

“Yeah, what kept you?” G asked.

“Feisty old lady up at the house tried to stab Deeks with a knitting needle.” Kensi replied. “She put up quite the fight.”

 

*

The hat was a total loss, but the scarf turned out nice. Callen pulled it out of his bag the next morning as the four of them sat around filling out their paperwork. He balled it up and took aim for the trash can beyond Deeks’s desk. It lost aerodynamicness as it flew through the air. Deeks snatched it out of the air as it tumbled past, on a trajectory to miss the bin by at least a yard.

“You’re throwing it away?” Deeks asked incredulously.

“This is LA, I don’t exactly have a use for it.” Callen replied.

“Ski trips? Visiting your dad in Russia? Sentimental value? You travel enough in places that are cold. What a waste.”

“It’s a little conspicuous, don’t you think.”

“That’s no reason to get rid of it!” Deeks draped it around his own neck, tossed the tasseled end over his shoulder. “What do you guys think, does it suit me?” He looked from Kensi to Sam.

“If you really want it, then merry early Christmas, Deeks.” Callen said.

“It’s July!” Kensi protested.

“No take-backs!” Deeks crowed.

*

Callen didn’t throw the knitting needles away. He wasn’t a sentimental man by nature, and hated hanging on to things he didn’t plan to use in the future. Still, he didn’t throw them away, and on a day off a few weeks later wound up, without conscious intent, at a big chain craft store.

*

“What is that?” Sam asked.

“I would think a fully trained operative would be able to identify yarn at close range.”

“What are you doing with it? We’re on a stakeout.”

“You make origami on stakeouts all the time.”

“Yeah, I don’t _knit_. This is going to be the magic tricks all over again, isn’t it?”

“Illusions, Sam. They’re illusions.” 

 

 


End file.
